When he grew up, Moses fled to the desert where God told him to go back to Egypt and lead the Israelites out of slavery. When Moses asked Pharaoh to let his people go, Pharaoh told him no. Each time, God sent a plague on Egypt. Finally, Pharaoh commanded the death of every first born. The Lord told Moses, however, that he would pass over any home that had the blood of a lamb on their doorposts.
It was after this final plague that Pharaoh finally let the Israelites go. This is why Passover is also referred to as the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The holiday begins with the Passover Seder.
This is a ritual feast that includes reading, drinking wine, washing the hands, eating special foods, and signing. A traditional Seder meal consists of four cups of wine, veggies dipped in saltwater, flatbread called matzah, bitter herbs, such as horseradish, and roasted lamb. While on all other holidays we eat from two whole loaves, here we eat from one broken matzah and one whole one.
The concern for the outsider breaks into our family banquet symbolically in the form of a broken matzah marring our sense of wholeness. While even the three-matzah tradition includes one broken matzah, it chiefly emphasizes the seder as a Thanksgiving Dinner.
The three matzot recall the minimal thanksgiving offering describedin the Torah Leviticus That offering wasshared within a community of friends and relatives; the hosts praised God who had redeemed them from illness, imprisonment, or danger Psalm On Pesach, families retell how their children were threatened by Pharaoh and how they suffered degradation and injustice in Egypt.
While sharing the thanksgiving offering of matzah, they sing Hallel to thank God. How on earth can we explain this? The lamb was offered in their name and no one could join their dinner gathering as an afterthought. Later the term afikoman was applied to the special dessert that was mandated at the seder —matzah eaten in lieu of the bite of Pesach lamb that concluded the meal in Temple times. Together with the Gemara, it makes up the Talmud. In Israel, Jews have a seder only on the first night of Passover.
Two days later, Christians will celebrate Easter. The observances make for one of the holiest times of the year for both faiths. While they commemorate unrelated events, Passover and Easter fall very close to one another on the calendar.
More: 5 things to know about Passover. The reason for that lies with the moon. Easter and Passover dates are pegged to the lunar calendar, where months are measured by how long it takes the moon to go from new to full and back to new. Christians celebrate Easter Sunday as the day when Mary discovered the empty tomb of Jesus following his resurrection.
In fact, many churches hold sunrise services because Mary made her discovery at daybreak.
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